The king Rajarajacholan build a thanjavour …

Nobody knows exactly why he built the temple other than himself. But we can possibly conclude the most probable reasons leading to the temple being built from the works of authors, historians etc..It was his long time dream to build a large granite temple, the first of its kind in the world that time. He wanted Thanjavur (then capital of the Cholas) to be not just remembered by the future generations as a fort or a city or a place where the great Cholas ruled, but a place where God lived. He wished us to see how well the people of that time lived, and how wonderfully God protected and blessed them. The descendants can understand how people worshiped their lord by placing their art, culture and valor under his feet. RajaRajan thought that the bodies of the people may be temporary in this world, but their mind and the thoughts that occur from the people’s minds must not be buried with them. One more reason was that the Cholas had captured nearly 100,000 POW's during that time due to the result of winning the war with their neighboring kingdoms. Such a number of enemy prisoners can’t be held safe for so long. So he wanted to make full use of them by utilizing them for building the temple.